


please respond?

by shortbreadd



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Enjoy!, Fluff, Multi, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Uhhhh this is a sort of walkie talkie au/magic au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 19:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20102314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortbreadd/pseuds/shortbreadd
Summary: A walkie talkie lay on the ground. Weird. These woods hadn’t had any human occupants in decades. The electric charged fence had made sure of that. It should have blocked out Andrew, too, if not for the tiny ditch that had been dug on the far emptiness.Andrew picked up the walkie talkie, and pressed the On button. It flickered on. Curiously, the screen started to get overtaken by nonsensical numbers and letters in no particular order. He’d never had a walkie talkie, but he knew from commercials that it wasn’t supposed to do that.The strange combinations were fading out, replaced by a bold Recalibrating.And then it went blank.“Hello?”Silence.Andrew stared at the clunky machine for a moment, then stuffed it into his bag. Cass was going to start calling soon anyway.He trudged his way back to the tiny hole and wriggled through it.He walked back home, walkie talkie silent the whole time.orAn au where Andrew finds a walkie talkie in a forest and pours secrets into it until one day it responds.





	please respond?

**Five years ago**

A walkie talkie lay on the ground. Weird. These woods hadn’t had any human occupants in decades. The electric charged fence had made sure of that. It should have blocked out Andrew, too, if not for the tiny ditch that had been dug on the far emptiness.

Andrew picked up the walkie talkie, and pressed the On button. It flickered on. Curiously, the screen started to get overtaken by nonsensical numbers and letters in no particular order. He’d never had a walkie talkie, but he knew from commercials that it wasn’t supposed to do _that._

The strange combinations were fading out, replaced by a bold **Recalibrating.**

And then it went blank. 

“Hello?” 

_Silence._

Andrew stared at the clunky machine for a moment, then stuffed it into his bag. Cass was going to start calling soon anyway. 

He trudged his way back to the tiny hole and wriggled through it. 

He walked back home, walkie talkie silent the whole time. 

x

Andrew fidgeted with the worn down buttons on his walkie talkie. He’d pressed his buttons enough that the already faded labels had been all but rubbed off. Nicky was talking about his boyfriend, Erik. 

Nicky talked about Erik enough so that Andrew often wondered why he hadn’t just left Aaron and Andrew to go live happily ever after with his fairy tale prince. The twins were old enough to live by themselves, what with Aaron finally getting clean and quitting drugs once and for all. 

Andrew, of course could take care of himself. He’d done it all his life. 

He listened to Aaron’s boring speech on applying for more scholarships for five minutes more, then left. The walkie-talkie was heavy and waiting in his pocket. Andrew walked upstairs, then closed and locked the door to his bedroom. 

_Click._

The walkie talkie’s screen lit up in the pitch black room. Andrew took a deep breath, then started talking. It had been a week since he’d done this, but it was reassuring and familiar all the same. 

He spoke about Aaron’s newfound interest in the medical part of school, about Nicky’s wistful tone when he talked about Erik, about everything but himself. That part was always saved for last. 

Andrew finished his tirade on how annoying the history teacher was, and let go off the button. Per tradition, he waited long enough for someone to respond, but not out of some sort of belief that someone would talk back. 

It was just something he did. 

He waited a minute, then two, before standing up to turn on the light, a sign that this little ritual was done. A millisecond before Andrew flicked on the lamp, there was a faint crackle from the walkie talkie. 

He froze. 

This had never happened. In all the years he’d spoken into the walkie talkie, no sound had ever greeted him. Not even a rush of static, or beeps. This shouldn’t be happening. 

The walkie talkie hadn’t ever needed to have its batteries changed. It always worked, even it was stuck in water or dropped countless times or stomped. It was practically indestructible. 

Andrew watched the bright screen for almost five minutes, but no other sounds were emitted. 

_Maybe I’m going crazy,_ he thought. 

Another minute passed before Andrew moved to turn it off, when a faint voice asked, “Hello?”

His heart was pounding as he reached for the walkie talkie, and answered back, “Hello.” 

This didn’t have to be something strange. It was probably just that some random person had found the other walkie talkie and was curious, just like Andrew had been all those years ago. That was possible, right? 

It seemed like that was the most probable reason to this strange voice, Andrew decided. 

That was, until the tinny voice asked again, _”Andrew?”_

What the fuck. 

“Who are you?” Andrew asked. 

There was a pause. 

“I’m Neil.” the voice was definitely male. 

“How do you know my name?” 

“I know you, Andrew. I know that you hate vegetables and that you like sweets and that you gave up your whole life for a twin you never met, that you left Cass even though you loved her, I know that-”

_”Shut up.”_

Andrew was shivering now. With rage, surprise, and panic all rising up into his throat in an ugly mess of emotions, threatening to spill out. He’d said all those things to _someone,_ when he’d thought that there was nobody on the other end. 

Someone out there knew every single private thought Andrew’d had, every horrifying detail of every home he’d been to, even _Drake._ It disgusted him and memories were starting to loop in his head, an endless wave of his torturers and siblings and even Cass. 

“-Andrew? Andrew!” Neil was shouting. “Stay calm, we both know everything that’s in your head isn’t real, I’m sorry for bringing it up, I didn’t know how to prove otherwise, I- oh fuck, he’s coming, I have to go-” 

Neil’s voice cut off all of a sudden. 

And Andrew was left in the middle of his bedroom, head in his arms and every horrid detail of his life replaying over and over. 

x

The next time Neil talked to Andrew was a week later. Andrew’d convinced himself that the whole thing was a hallucination; just something that his stupid mind had conjured up, until that same voice was asking for Andrew again. 

This time, Andrew was much less prone to answering, what with everything that had happened last time, but he answered anyway. Immediately, Neil was apologizing, and Andrew hated it. 

“I don’t care,” Andrew said. “I don’t care if you didn’t mean it, I don’t care if you’re sorry. It doesn’t matter. So shut up.” 

“Okay.” Andrew could hear the frown in Neil’s voice just from that one word. It was strange, really, how comfortable he felt with this person. Andrew had spent years spilling every secret into that old walkie talkie, then found out a week ago that Neil had been listening for all those years. 

Despite the intense discomfort and anger that had come along with the realization, he didn’t know why, but Neil was familiar. And he wanted to know why. 

“Why can I recognize your voice?” he asked. 

Neil made a sound of surprise. “You’ve been hearing it for what, six years now? I talk to you all the time. I thought you heard me. At night, that is. We’re in totally different places, so it’d be hard for you to stay up long enough to hear me and remember it in the morning.” 

Andrew furrowed his eyebrows. At night? He always kept the walkie talkie on his bedside table or stuffed under his pillow. He would have heard it if Neil had been talking. He definitely would have remembered it too, what with the perfect memory and what-not. 

Except. Andrew hadn’t had any sort of dreams for the first decade or so of his life. He knew that other people had them, or had them, then forgot, but his perfect recall cancelled the latter out. 

Right around the time when he’d taken the walkie talkie was when he’d started dreaming. And if he thought hard enough, Andrew could dimly remember a voice. Always a voice talking in them. 

_Had Neil been speaking to Andrew in his dreams the whole time?_

It made some sense. Andrew was trying to remember what exactly Neil had said in his dreams, when the crackle of the walkie talkie interrupted him. 

“You still there?” 

Andrew startled, head swivelling around even though nobody was there. “Yes. I remember you in my dreams.” 

“Oh, that makes sense. I mean- it might not make sense to you but these walkie talkies aren’t like most normal ones, they’re kind of-” 

“Magic.” Andrew interrupted. 

Neil huffed a laugh. “Yeah, magic. Anyway, do you want to keep talking when we’re both conscious?” 

He contemplated it. Nobody would have to find out about this, if he was careful enough. It wouldn’t hurt anyway, and something about the way Neil spoke made Andrew beat a little faster. 

“Yes.” 

“Yes? As in you want to keep talking?” Neil sounded hopeful. 

“Yes.” Andrew bulldozed on before he decided against it. “Let’s keep talking.” 

x

“Neil, where are you, I can’t hear you well, what’s wrong-” Andrew’s voice rang out, too loud in the cramped parking lot. 

Neil choked on a sob, and clutched the walkie talkie close to his chest. 

“If you want to find the other half, go to Baltimore. There should be a big mansion, go asking around for the directions.” Neil’s voice was wavering. Andrew would understand later. When he found Neil’s walkie talkie.

“Neil, what the fuck are you going on about? Just tell me where you are, I want-” 

“Junior, where are you? Your daddy’s waiting, you know. He’ll be mad when he finds out how long you made him wait!” Lola’s maniacal voice was too close. 

_”Thank you. You were amazing.”_

_Click._

x

Andrew couldn’t breathe. 

Neil was gone, he was gone, he’d finally run away from Andrew, to god knows where. Neil was in trouble. Andrew had heard the ear-splitting gunshot before Neil had clicked off. 

He was shoving the walkie talkie into his belt and grabbing his bag with a hundred dollars inside before he knew it. 

He was walking out of the house before he knew it, shouting to Nicky to not let Aaron take anything. 

He was speeding speeding down the almost empty roads sixty miles over the limit before he knew it. 

And hours later, he was there. 

At a giant mansion. 

The man next to the convenience store had said it was abandoned. 

Andrew was sprinting through the halls, until he ran- literally ran into a secret door. It led to a creepy looking basement, and he was tripping down the stairs to get down before he knew it. 

In the center of the room, illuminated by Andrew’s flashlight was a bloody walkie-talkie. 

_Click._

The screen lit on, and the deja vu struck Andrew. And just like he’d done six years ago, he pressed the button and breathed out a quiet “Hello?”

The walkie talkie exploded. 

Andrew was thrown back into a chair and a light from the shattered remains of the walkie talkie shown.

The blinding light faded a minute later, and Andrew opened his eyes to see a bleeding boy. He had bright blue eyes, auburn hair, and burns all over his hands and cheek, with deep cuts along the other cheek. 

Andrew knew without a doubt that this was Neil. 

Neil looked up, and shock spread over his face. 

_“Andrew?” _

_“Yes?” Andrew said. _

_“Andrew?”_

_“Yes.”_

And Neil was falling down and Andrew was lunging forward and-

_“Yes or no?”_

_“Yes.”_


End file.
